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Calgary's Downtown Population

I recall seeing a graphic on the Edmonton page a while back showing the percentage of missing middle relative to all starts and Calgary and Edmonton faired very well. I don't know where the Edmonton starts are being built, or if any are in its downtown, but in overall numbers pretty solid.
 
Mountain Man said:
I think there are some conversions on the books, not sure if anything has actually started yet though.
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There’s a few being done:

CN Building - 344 units
Phipps McKinnon - ~60 units I think plus office and retail.

And some recent ones:
Capital tower - 150+
Peak tower - 200+

All of these moving forward without taxpayer subsidies. But what taxpayers are subsidizing is the extension of our CRL and a handful of infrastructure upgrades/parks that have spurred on proposals for 14 new buildings. About half of those will be smaller 6-8 story builds. 100-200 unit type sizes. The other half are more substantial like The Parks and Stationlands.

Edmonton has nowhere near the office building count of Calgary, so there’s a lot less conversions needed. Edmonton also did a lot of conversions in the 2003-2013 window for a lot of older offices and warehouse spaces.

Edmonton is better off doing tax incentives for new projects that get rid of parking lots than conversions. In 2021 they did a program like this that saw a dozen projects move forward, about half downtown and half in Whikwentowin (beltline type area west of DT).
 
Here is the graphic that I saw in the Edmonton thread showing missing middle housing. Unfortunately it doesn't cover anything to do with location, but are overall numbers. Still if you look at the last 4 years or so it shows solid numbers for missing middle starts for Calgary and Edmonton relative to the big three metros.

1761857121813.png

1761857218434.png
 
Interesting how the types of housing varies so broadly between the cities. It actually shows how the big eastern cities really don't have great housing variety and all with almost no suites (Toronto heavy on stacked towns, Ottawa with rowhouses and Montreal heavy on apartments and stacked towns) compared to the western ones where there is much greater housing variety.
 
As a hint, if you haven't looked at the AB Politics post, the new Buffalo riding with population estimate as of July 2024:
1761923755125.png

The previous Calgary Buffalo (includes the rest of the Centre City as well as Inglewood/Ramsay and Mission/Cliff Bungalow) was 77,635, a difference of 23.4K. As of 2021, I/R and M/CB were 6.2 and 6.3K respectively and my estimate of the missing strip of Beltline plus East Village is 6.1K (combined for 18.7K vs 23,4K in 2024). If the growth was split proportionally, it would be 61.9K in the Centre City; I wouldn't be surprised if more of the growth was in the Centre City. that, plus a few new buildings finishing and getting moved into would make 65K pretty attainable; I'll say 67K just to have a different guess and be an optimist.

CalgaryTiger said:
Things in Edmonton are weird, they're likely losing a riding in the inner-city for the next provincial election. I thought they were the golden child of missing middle but maybe not?
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They're doing alright; it's just that the province's population grew by over 20% and the number of ridings grew by 2% so the threshold for a riding has gone from 46.7K to 54.9K. The existing six inner Edmonton ridings combined grew by 18%; Edmonton City Centre grew by 27%. (Calgary-Buffalo grew by 56%!). Last time, five of the six inner Edmonton ridings were below the population threshold, and the new inner city ridings cover a slightly smaller area, with some communities on the west moving out to suburban ridings.

The inner city equivalent for Calgary (the five ridings of Buffalo, Currie, Elbow, Klein and Mountain View) grew by 27% combined with the four outside Buffalo growing by 19%.
 
Nice catch @ByeByeBaby If that one riding is already at 54K in July 2024, then Calgary's downtown core should be well over 60K come census time. Adding in Chinatown, Vic park portion of the Beltline, plus the portion of Mission, would already put the downtown at over 60K, even back in July 2024. 67K seems quite reasonable.
 
Surrealplaces said:
Calgary's crushing it when it comes to the missing middle. Calgary really took off in 2024, I wonder how much was to do with blanket zoning vs just a high volume in general?
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A lot of it could be just general high volume; new communities provide more of a mix than they used to. I picked Belmont as a completely random example. The traditional suburban SFD lots are on the left, and the duplex/townhome ('missing middle') lots are on the right (red lots are sold):
1761926453220.png
1761926524952.png

I count 278 'missing middle' lots here in this cul-de-sac focused suburban location; there's about the same number of apartment units getting built. My rough ballpark is 1200 SFD lots; that's around 16% each apartment and 'missing middle'.
 
ByeByeBaby said:
A lot of it could be just general high volume; new communities provide more of a mix than they used to. I picked Belmont as a completely random example. The traditional suburban SFD lots are on the left, and the duplex/townhome ('missing middle') lots are on the right (red lots are sold):

I count 278 'missing middle' lots here in this cul-de-sac focused suburban location; there's about the same number of apartment units getting built. My rough ballpark is 1200 SFD lots; that's around 16% each apartment and 'missing middle'.
Click to expand...
I suspect that's the case. For inner city communities there has been a noticeable rise in missing middle housing and I believe it could be related to the blanket zoning but not sure if the numbers would be high enough to push the overall numbers that high.
 
Im personally just buzzing that we now have a full downtown riding, and an extra inner city riding (including part of downtown). Our sweet little baby (Calgary) is growing up 🥹

54,000 people in downtown west of 1 Street SE is wild. 65 k overall definitely isn't out of the realm of possibility for next year
 
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